


tempt me, tease me (leave me breathless)

by luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Aftercare, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breathplay, Consensual Kink, Explicit Sexual Content, Happy Ending, Kink Exploration, Kink Negotiation, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Rain, Talking, but interrupted by chris, check notes at the beginning for more detailed warnings, very brief sebastian/other at the beginning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:09:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3254264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian will always answer when Chris calls. Tonight, that means some revelations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Euruaina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euruaina/gifts).



> **Minor warnings** for: brief Sebastian/other at the beginning (not in a relationship, just mutual kinky sex for a night) and also for one line of reference to Sebastian having somewhat self-abusive tendencies, e.g. looking for rough sex as a form of self-punishment.
> 
> Title from The Corrs’ “Breathless” this time; as ever, all fictional, only for fun!
> 
> Super-belated (like, three months late) birthday-present for a friend! Chapter two either up tomorrow or if I don't get to it then, Monday.

Sebastian’s phone yells at him while he’s squarely in the middle of having sex.  
  
This is not in fact a problem, or not too much of one, because it’s rather disappointing sex. Sebastian sighs—only internally, being presently gagged with his own tie and bound to his bedpost—and turns his head that way. The ridiculous Captain America star-spangled theme song keeps playing, blaring happily and incongruously through his bedroom. Chris Evans, calling him.  
                  
The person behind him stops, audibly lowers the cane, sighs. Fingers touch his hand, already loosening restraints. “You want to get that, don’t you?” Humor, but it’s covering regret, remorsefulness, wistfulness; Sebastian nods, wishing he knew what to say. He doesn’t.  
  
His phone goes off again.  
  
His bedroom blinds’re shut, keeping their secrets, but he can hear the rain outside. It’s pattering down, tapering off; much like the scene, and he can’t muster up the energy to be anything but amused at the commentary.  
  
It’s not that it’s bad, this encounter. It’s not quite good, either. His partner—broad-shouldered and kind and heroic and also named Christopher; yes, Sebastian _does_ have a type, he’s aware—is trying hard and not inexperienced, all the blows land right, the shock feels brilliant and anchoring and bright. That’s fine. It’s all…  
  
…fine.  
  
They’re not clicking. They’re not reading each other well, or at all, maybe. Christopher doesn’t touch him much, using cane and bondage and verbal command; Sebastian likes all of these things, has liked them on previous occasions, enjoys the visceral shuddering thrill of surrender to sensation.  
  
But his skin’s craving a kiss, a caress, some kind of contact, praise, belonging, like he’s not just a toy to play with but a _desired_ one, treasured somehow, even though he’s pretty sure that’s stupid. Christopher’s being rough when Sebastian wants rough _and_ gentle, and then stopping to fuss over him right when Sebastian’s starting to get into the roughness; it’s too much hurt sometimes and not enough closeness other times, and he doesn’t know how to explain. They’d probably both manage to get off if they kept going—it’s not terrible, and this Chris means well—but all the same the interruption’s a relief.  
  
His shoulders and ass and thighs burn when he shifts weight, someplace between delicious and irritatingly insufficient. Marks and lines and bruises, sizzling across his skin. There’ll be rope burns around his wrists, he knows. He’s got skin that takes assorted color and mementos—a suntan, a bruise, a scratch from nails—too easily. Prettily, people’ve said. He’s sore, right now, and he feels older than he should, and tired like lead weights down inside his bones.  
  
They’d started the night with spankings. Heavy hands on his skin. A cock ring. Denial. He’s unfulfilled and hard, yes, but the unfulfillment’s more emotional than physical, and he keeps slipping out of the right headspace even as Christopher tries more intensity, more bondage, rougher less-silky ropes winding along his arms and body, that stinging cane.  
  
He’s thinking too much, not relaxing enough; his fault, and he knows that too. And it doesn’t matter, subsumed by one instant instinctive response: if Chris Evans is calling, Chris needs him.   
  
Chris _is_ calling. And that—  
  
That realization makes his stomach flip; makes him lightheaded in a way he’s not felt all evening, though it’s spiked with instant concern. The rain trails off, giving him space.  
  
He’d known that Chris was in New York. Chris had called earlier; had left a message because Sebastian hadn’t picked up, because Sebastian’d been busy, out in Manhattan making a flying visit to his old actors’-training workshop, walking through the Applause New York door and being hugged by kids who remembered him from the last time. He’d turned his phone off.   
  
He’d turned it back on, of course, and desperately tried calling back. Three hours late. Chris’s last-minute talk-show interview long over. No answer.  
  
Sebastian, standing in the school’s white-walled hallway with the honey-oak floors, feeling students brush by him, had bitten his lip so hard it bled. Not swearing out loud, not in Romanian or English or German. Only in his head.  
  
He’d gone home, and he’d run hands through his hair, and he’d tried Chris one more time, and then he’d hated himself and fate and the mocking shape of ungrasped moments for a while. Missed chances, and the scent of rain.  
  
He knows himself well enough to know what to do, when he’d first started thinking about opening a bottle of vodka or digging fingernails into his palm until skin split apart or going to a certain club and finding someone to fuck him cruel and quick and raw or all of those together. He’d known he’d need to make himself _stop_ thinking. He’d called a friend.   
  
And now they’re here. Himself and that friend. And Sebastian’s foolish heart, which carries around Chris Evans’ cheerful smile and sincere kindness like a meticulously hoarded treasure, tucked up tight and kept safe like every golden memory of every time Chris ever grinned at him.  
  
And now Chris is calling. At this hour. Which means—  
  
He doesn’t know what that means, but there’s no way he’s not going to answer. Chris Evans is the most genuine openhearted real-life superhero Sebastian’s ever known, and if Chris miraculously needs something from _him,_ he’ll be there.  
  
He turns, mouth and wrists free, in time to catch his companion collecting and handing over the phone, momentarily silent and rescued from its spot on the dresser. It’s a generous gesture, especially under the circumstances, and not without some worry. Sebastian heads off the inevitable “Are you all right?” with a light kiss, one that he means, one that’s a thank-you; and accepts the offering.  
  
He doesn’t call back right away, though he wants to—it’s _Chris,_ and oh, that means Sebastian wants to. But he needs a second to collect breath and equilibrium. He perches on his bed, winces—cane-stripes not getting along with even his beloved feather-fluff duvet—and swallows, testing his throat.   
  
This gives his current Christopher the chance to ask about his wellbeing after all, eyes rueful, shrugging on jeans and black jacket over unsatisfied fading arousal.   
  
Sebastian sighs, smiles, shrugs. The motion pulls at cane-striped skin. “I’m fine. Are you—I mean, if you wanted, I could—”  
  
Christopher comes over. Touches his cheek, strokes a thumb over his eyebrow. Sebastian leans into the touch; Christopher says, “No, that’s it, isn’t it? You _are_ totally fine,” and if he’s wishing for a different answer, well, at least he’s taking it well. “Can I put something on these? Your back. Those couple darker ones on your thighs. Before I go.”  
  
Sebastian hesitates, glancing at his phone. “I’m…they’re not bad. I can handle it.”  
  
One corner of Christopher’s mouth twitches. “Sure.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sebastian says, on impulse but meaning that too. “I only meant—it’s me. Not getting out of my head. I’m very sorry.”  
  
“It’s not your fault.” The fingers stroke his hair, just once, then lift away. “Wish you’d let me help, but okay. Sebastian?”  
  
Sebastian looks up. Christopher’s halfway to the bedroom door, but stops to smile. It’s a friend’s expression. Truthful, and if heart-bruised at the outcome, only in a very minor way. “The way you looked at that phone, when it rang. You never looked at me once like that, all night.”  
  
“I—”  
  
“Go find him,” Christopher says, “or her, or whatever pronoun applies. Okay?”  
  
Sebastian nods because he doesn’t know what there is to say, and Christopher leaves, and that’s another truth. Like the ending of the rain, like the combination of exhaustion and anticipation battling in his bones.   
  
He picks up his phone. Calls back.  
  
Chris picks up almost immediately, and also profanely, swearing out loud. Sebastian blinks.  
  
“—and I’m so fuckin’ sorry,” Chris finishes. “Anthony’s a moron.”  
  
What does Anthony have to do with anything, Sebastian wonders. He asks, because he’s floundering in conversational waters as it is.  
  
“Um,” Chris says. “Well—”  
  
Noise, close up, and a scuffle; Anthony Mackie, plainly also present, takes the phone away from Chris. “Seb! Hey, Seb, you totally need to come pick him up!”  
  
“Are you drunk?” Sebastian inquires. He’s quite sure the answer’s yes. He’s operating on autopilot and disbelief. Chris and Anthony drunk-dialed him. Okay. He can—try to process that. He closes his eyes, briefly. He’s not naked—he’d grabbed sweatpants out of some obscure desire to cover himself and his kinky sex bruises up before talking to Chris—but he _is_ aching. In so many, many ways.  
  
“Yes,” Anthony says earnestly. “He is. We both are. But he seriously is. I’m telling you, man, you need to come down here and get him.”  
  
“I am _not_ —” Squabbling, background music, smacking of hands. Sebastian waits, fascinated and in love and wanting to cry, only internally, in that place where he knows that Chris and Anthony went out without him and called because they needed a ride.  
  
Anthony gets back on the phone. “I have _seen_ Evans drunk, man, and next thing you know he’s gonna start hugging trees or kissing babies or inviting everyone to Disneyland—”  
  
“One time! That was one fuckin’ time!”  
  
“Shut up, Evans, I’m getting your superhero boyfriend to rescue you. I can’t leave, it’s, like, a contractual publicity thing, they want me to be seen, and also it’s a really good party, y’know? So you have to come pick him up before the spontaneous Disney music karaoke gets going.”  
  
This does not make any sense, but Sebastian’s traitorous heart’s skipping beats at the thought of time with Chris. He says, “That makes no sense, but yes, fine, where are you?”  
  
“Oh God,” Chris protests in the background, “don’t—”  
  
Anthony gives him the address. A bar. A popular one, classic and bustling. Not too far. Chris apparently has a rental car there, though he’s in no shape to drive it back. Sebastian says, “I can drive,” and very resolutely refuses to think about that _don’t,_ about Chris not wanting him to come. “I’ll take the subway over. Ten minutes.”  
  
“You’re adorable,” Anthony declares. “I mean amazing. You’re amazing. I _knew_ you would.”  
  
“You,” Chris proclaims, “are a serious _dick_.”  
  
Unsure to whom this judgment’s being delivered, Sebastian asks, “Me?”  
  
“No! No no no. Him. _Him._ ” Chris sounds endearingly and drunkenly emphatic about this. “Not you! You’re perfect!”  
  
“Now I do believe him,” Sebastian murmurs, “you’re absolutely not sober in any way…” and strips off his sweatpants and yanks on jeans and grabs the first shirt he can find that has long sleeves and gentle fabric. He’s still kind of shaky—he’s extremely aware of the potential crash he’s disregarding, the impending fallout from the physical and emotional impacts of the scene, even if he’d never gone down far enough—but he’s functional right now, and he needs to be so. For Chris.  
  
“Wait,” Chris says. “Why d’you…why’d you say…why wouldn’t I say that? Why does that mean I’m not sober?”  
  
“Are you?” Boots, boots, where are his boots—not over there, that’s different leather—maybe he should clean up—  
  
“No! But that’s not the point!”  
  
“I’m walking out the door. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”  
  
“We’re not done talking about this,” Chris mutters, on the other end.  
  
“What _are_ we talking about?—and don’t lose your phone. I’ll call you when I’m outside.”  
  
“He won’t,” Anthony says. “I’ll keep an eye on him. Two eyes, even. I’m hilarious.”  
  
“ _And_ a dick,” Chris says. “A…hilarious dick. Sebastian—” Anthony retorts, “No more tequila for you. Seb, we’ll see you in a few minutes, man.”  
  
Sebastian’s about to say a pointless “Yes,” but the call ends, the screen dark in his hand. He takes a deep breath. Lets it out. The night tastes like the scent after rain, like sex and sweat and blood rising under skin. Chris called him perfect, and didn’t mean it. Tequila-fueled babbling.  
  
He’s not an idiot and he’s not that naïve. Anthony could almost certainly drive Chris’s rental car to a hotel and then come back to the party, and if not, this is New York City: taxicabs exist. Hell, limousines exist for the exact purpose of ferrying around tipsy celebrities. So Anthony obviously wants him to come and get Chris, for whatever mysterious unfathomable reason; Sebastian’s not going to attempt to follow the workings of Anthony’s labyrinthine brain. Anyway, it’s not as if he minds. He’s selfish enough to take this much when it’s offered. He gets to see Chris.  
  
And he knows seeing Chris’ll hurt like a fish-hook snagging on his heart, tugging it up beneath his breastbone; and he’ll keep that hurt like one more treasure in that chest of gold.  
  
He runs down the stairs of his apartment building, all five flights, skipping steps and wincing as muscles protest, and realizes at the bottom that he’s forgotten an umbrella. But the rain’s transformed into a crystalline teardrop cold, more springtime ice than winter showers, and while the streets’re wet he’s not going to end up soaked to the bone.  
  
He tucks both hands into his jacket-pockets for warmth, and leans into the welcome numbing cold. And he goes off to find a certain bar, to find Chris and take him someplace warm too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say two chapters? I meant three. Three chapters.
> 
> ...oh, it's not as if it's a _surprise._ *laughs*

The bar’s not far. It sits in a trendy spot where lots of news anchors and interviewees wander away for off-the-record martini-plied gossip-trading. Lighted windows beckon through the misty half-rain. Noise spills out onto the sidewalk like the colors of a broken kaleidoscope: bright, multihued, sharp-edged, glinting.  
  
Sebastian doesn’t bother going inside. It’s crowded and he’s not presently relishing the idea of weaving his way through excitable bodies and their arm-waving cheers at sports on tv. He pulls out his phone, hovering in the street, leaning on the wall. A dark-haired petite woman ducks out of the door and glances at him casually in passing, and then does a doubletake. Sebastian finds a smile for her because he really does feel it, he’s grateful to and awed by every one of his fans, and she blushes and starts to walk away and then stops and says, “Here.”  
  
He’s not expecting this, and stares at her and the offered umbrella for far too long. She blushes an even more vivid pink and explains, “Look, I’m just getting on the subway, you look like you’re waiting for someone, it’s all wet out, take it, please.”  
  
The umbrella’s dark midnight blue with white polka-dots, bouncing and carefree. He takes it. Feels his mouth smile a little more. “Thank you. _Mulţumesc._ ”  
  
“No,” she says, “just, um, you know, thank _you,_ and you totally made me cry about TJ Hammond, I just promised myself I’d say that if I ever met you, oh God I’m leaving now, I swear, I’m glad I had an umbrella for you—” and runs off through the diamond-point twinkle of the ghostlike rain.  
  
Left alone, Sebastian considers his new acquisition. Flips it and catches it, one-handed, the way he would a practice Winter Soldier knife. Finds himself oddly comforted for no reason other than the twirl of polka-dots and a kind anonymous word in the damp.  
  
He calls Chris. Chris answers and starts right away with, “You aren’t here!”  
  
“I’m outside. Come on.”  
  
“You’re not coming in?”  
  
“I’m not…no, I don’t think so. Not tonight.” He would. On some other night. With the promise of Chris’s demonstrative heat right beside him, so that he can soak it up in secret. Not now. Not while every nerve ending’s oversensitive and he’s going to have to be the sober one. He props a shoulder on the wall a foot or so from the door. Lets it carry some weight. “Unless you require assistance walking. In which case I’ll come and valiantly rescue Captain America from the clutches of terrible American beer.”  
  
“Ohhh,” Chris says, “that’s low even for you, what do you mean terrible, haven’t I ever given you a Sam Adams Winter Lager, and I’m not in anyone’s clutches. Unfortunately.”  
  
Unfortunately, Sebastian almost repeats. But he catches himself: if Chris wants to go home with someone else, if Chris is drunk and wishing for someone’s embrace, that’s got nothing to do with him. Shouldn’t hurt like a throwing-knife nicking an artery, blood gushing free.   
  
He offers, resolutely ignoring the bleeding-out, “If you’d rather stay and find someone to…clutch you…which cannot _possibly_ be an American euphemism of any sort…I can leave.”  
  
There’s a sound. As if Chris has maybe stood up too quickly, or tripped over furniture, or run into a table: a wooden stumble and scrape. “What? No! I don’t—I meant—I’m coming, okay, don’t fuckin’ go anywhere—”  
  
“Hi,” Anthony says, taking over the phone. “We’ll be out in a sec, kid.”  
  
“Is he okay?” Sebastian flips the umbrella again. End over end. “And still no to that.”  
  
“Wouldn’t let him drive anywhere any time soon, but we’re not talking alcohol poisoning here, he’ll be fine, you’ll be great, you’re good for him.” And before Sebastian can react to _that,_ the door opens and both Anthony and Chris pour out onto the sidewalk. Anthony says, “Hi, kid,” and tosses Chris’s phone over. Sebastian catches it and glares and then catches Chris, who throws both arms around him and nuzzles into his neck. “You came!”  
  
“I did.” At another moment, in some other timeline, he’d’ve made a joke: what do you mean I came, I’m not even breathing hard…  
  
He can’t. Chris is solid and heavy and intent on clinging to him like a limpet. Sebastian loves the feeling, and Sebastian’s bruises shriek in protest, and Sebastian’s traitorous body reminds him that he’d been wearing a cock ring earlier and denied any kind of relief, and Chris smells alcohol-flushed and male and beer-flavored and woodsy, like campfires and heat and strong cozy arms…  
  
The rain erupts at that moment. Of course it does. Thundering down, one final defiant burst of emotion.  
  
Sebastian balances Chris in one arm and snaps open his new favorite umbrella. Anthony raises eyebrows. “Stylish.”  
  
“I notice you don’t have one.”  
  
“When did you get this sarcastic? ’S like watching a kitten find claws. Kinda awesome, man.”  
  
“I like kittens,” Chris proclaims into Sebastian’s neck. “Fluffy. Cuddly. Big eyes. Lots of paws.”  
  
“Of course you do,” Sebastian tells him, “you like everything small and cute and precious,” and resists the impulse to kiss his hair. This is made easier by a timely reminder-twinge from his shoulders, which’re presently grumbling about the fact of his arms being bound to a bedpost and shortly thereafter asked to support a heroically-muscled body. “And you don’t know everything about me. Keys?”  
  
Anthony tosses them his direction. “Know you came to get him. Have fun.”  
  
“As if I’d trust him to you.” This makes Anthony laugh, which is probably not a good sign, but at this point getting Chris out of the rain takes precedence. The parking lot which’ll contain Chris’s rental car is around the back; they turn that way, with some difficulty. Sebastian adds a, “Have a good night,” about as politely as he can manage, tinged with a bit more of that sarcasm; Anthony goes back into the bar snickering to himself. Sebastian mentally shrugs and leaves that one alone. Who knows.  
  
He could leave Chris’s rental car and get them a cab; he doesn’t want to, because it’s Chris’s car and he knows that Chris will worry, knows that Chris will legitimately start to feel heartpoundingly anxious, if the car’s abandoned in a public lot all night. Fortunately it’s a fairly basic model, compact and easy to navigate. He plops Chris into the passenger side and runs around to the other, hopping in and chucking the umbrella into a cupholder. “Where’s your hotel?”  
  
“Um,” Chris says. “It’s…a Hilton? I think?”  
  
“…you _think?_ ”  
  
“I didn’t make the reservation.” Chris sits up, all at once appearing rather more sober. “My agent did. Last-minute. But it wasn’t too far. Like five minutes. Are you coming back to the hotel with me?”  
  
“I’m driving you back, yes.”  
  
Chris blinks at him as if suddenly recalling a drastically life-altering fact. The rain holds its breath. “You don’t drive!”  
  
“I don’t have a car,” Sebastian clarifies patiently, mentally picking the closest Hilton property. He’s pretty sure he can navigate them there. “I can drive.”  
  
“You can drive?”  
  
A red light, a smear of brilliance, a cacophony of horn-honks in the distance. So far-off, like the city’s worn out from crying throughout the day. “I got my license at sixteen. Part of the American high-school coming-of-age ritual, I believe.” Part of trying too hard to fit in, to lose the accent, to not be weird or strange or lost any longer. “I do know how to drive. Useful on film sets.”  
  
“You never told me that.” Chris’s voice is forlorn. Melancholy in the streets of Boston. Cobblestones and drowning flags drenched in rain. Sebastian has the fleeting impulse to tug his sleeves down further, to conceal revelatory marks and rope-burns. Chris doesn’t need to worry about anything more.  
  
He refuses to challenge the next yellow light. Not his car. Chris’s rental. He says, about the driving, “I didn’t think it was particularly important.”  
  
The gap between statements hangs heavy in the night, before Chris murmurs, “Guess it’s none of my business…”  
  
“I’d’ve told you if I’d ever thought it mattered.”  
  
“Yeah, I know.” Chris makes a face at the blurry city lights. Intoxicated—though not as badly as Anthony’d seemed to think, unless Chris is just that good at hiding it—and adorable. “Seb—oh fuck.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I can’t find my room key…”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“It must be back at the bar—shit, shit, what’m I gonna—it’s not in my pocket—”  
  
“Can’t they give you a new one?”  
  
“Yeah, no, I mean yeah, but—” Chris stops uncoordinatedly rooting through pockets and fumbling around. Shuts his eyes, pressing the heels of his hands into them. “I can’t—I lost it, it’s gonna make trouble for them, the hotel people, how could I be so stupid, and I can’t—what if I try to say sorry, but I can’t fuckin’ talk or hang onto a damn hotel key, and I made you come get me, and I’m so fuckin’ sorry—”   
  
They’re at an intersection. Sebastian throws a glance from left to right—no other cars—and pulls over. Car in park. Hand on Chris’s shoulder. Anxiety attack imminent, trembling under his palm; no, he says silently to the night. He’s got me. “Breathe. In. Hold it. Now out.”  
  
Chris, shaking, breathes as instructed. In. Out. Again. Sebastian’s shaking too after a few minutes, mostly out of sheer relief. He says, calmly, “All right. So you can come home with me—back to my place, I mean—” Damn. Damn, damn. Home, with Chris. As if that’s a possibility. “—for tonight, and we’ll figure out your hotel in the morning when we’re sober. People lose those room keys all the time, they’re replaceable, it’s fine, Chris. _Promit._ I promise. We can handle this.”  
  
Chris stares at him for a good fifteen seconds. Apprehension and panic replaced by some sort of dumbfounded astonishment. The car ticks and hums, engine cooling in the dark.  
  
“If you’d like,” Sebastian offers, “we can even tell them I borrowed your key and lost it, if you don’t mind asserting small untruths to hotel personnel.”  
  
Big blue half-plastered Captain America eyes stare at him some more.  
  
“…Chris?”  
  
“You…” One hand waves, a partial gesture, pulled back at the last second. As if Chris has meant to reach out, and thought better of that. “You really would? You wouldn’t, y’know, mind?”  
  
Sebastian half-smiles. Thinks of cars with broken-glass windows in Romanian capital-city streets, thinks of students waving flags and cheering with feral glee, thinks of saucer-eyed childhood memories and songs of revolutionary fervor and desperate upheavals of optimism like birthing-pains. Chris Evans is beautiful and genuine and real, and Sebastian would do far worse things, would splinter his body and perjure his soul, to give Chris one more day in which to eat pizza and laugh and clap friends on the shoulder with a broad happy hand. “No,” he says, “I wouldn’t mind.”  
  
Chris makes a sound that’s someplace between a grumble and a sigh, affectionate and half-frustrated. “Every time.”  
  
“Hmm?” He restarts the car. Guides them away along the rippling puddled streets. Heading home, this time.  
  
“Every time I think I know you. Y’know.” Chris flops a hand his direction, though it’s unclear what this is meant to demonstrate. “You say something different. Or you look all…different…’s there a word for that? Like what you’re saying isn’t what you’re saying. And then I don’t.”  
  
“…you don’t what, again?”   
  
“Know you.” Chris sighs dramatically. “I want to. But ’m always getting you wrong.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sebastian says, carefully making a left turn. The last thing he wants to do is injure Chris’s rental car. The lights shine and drip and gleam. Slick city glimmer, black and neon pools on pavement. “You brought me coffee once, on set. Hazelnut.”  
  
“Once.”  
  
“Would you like to do it more? I wouldn’t object.”  
  
“That!” Chris points an accusing finger at him. Sebastian jumps, and accidentally accelerates a bit too fast before getting his reactions under control. “You! You wouldn’t object! But that’s not, like, you wanting me to! How do I know if you want me to if you don’t want to tell me you want me to, or don’t want me to, or whatever you, y’know, want?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Chris slumps back against the seat. Shuts his eyes. “Never mind.”  
  
A red light. A pause. The car idles, purring like a great wet lion.   
  
“It’s not you,” Sebastian says, very quietly. Chris is drunk and won’t remember and the night’s made of hushed velvet shrouds around them.  “It’s not personal. I—you won’t—I can’t just assume anyone ever wants to know. I mean, me. Honestly.”  
  
Chris’s breath skips. A tiny sound, like a muted tragedy, like an unremarked body fallen on a battlefield; when Sebastian glances that way, Chris’s eyes are huge and hurt.  
  
“I could tell you,” Sebastian tries, propping up those wounded soldiers with words, the best he’s got to give, “about the first time I tried fresh blueberries. I was nearly thirteen, and my stepfather brought some home—he’d been at the store, and remind me to tell you about my first walk through an American supermarket sometime—and I’d not quite decided whether I’d forgiven him for not warning me about American chocolate after I’d gotten used to the German version, but I trusted him, so I ate one.” He maneuvers the car out of the way of a hurtling taxicab; someone late for a flight, perhaps, or rushing back from one. Returning, maybe, to someone waiting, someone who might’ve stayed up with tea and a blanket and a smile and the sound of rain.  
  
He goes on, because Chris is listening, “It tasted like nothing I’d ever known before. Like—well. Blueberries. I imagine you’ve had them. It’s not a complicated story. It’s only—that’s why they’re my favorite.” Chris doesn’t say anything, so he adds hastily, “And my mother and stepfather have been vastly entertained by this fact ever since. Chocolate-covered blueberries at Christmas, blueberry-vanilla coffee, blueberry muffins, and so on. At this point I’m tempted to tell them I like raspberries better, but in fact I don’t.”  
  
Still no answer. He looks over, wondering whether Chris has fallen asleep; it’s entirely possible, given however many tequila shots plus Sebastian’s vastly uninteresting childhood anecdote and the lullaby rhythms of the road.  
  
Chris is awake. Chris is gazing at him with an expression Sebastian can’t begin to know how to read. Dampness around long eyelashes like ocean-spray and salt.   
  
“Sorry,” Sebastian says, though he thinks he’s only apologizing to his own heart for giving it a nanosecond’s worth of hope. “My stories aren’t precisely the definition of exciting. We’ll be home in two minutes. I think I’ve got ibuprofen and I’ve certainly got water, unless you’d rather I make coffee.”  
  
“Sebastian,” Chris starts, and then shakes his head. “I don’t even know what to—thank you.”  
  
“For picking you up? No.”  
  
“No…” Chris bites his lip. Turns his head to watch the dwindling rain for a moment. “If I say it again will you pretend you don’t understand me? Thank you for that. Telling me.”  
  
“You’re drunk and thanking me for telling you stories about my childhood.” The words hurt. Saying them hurts. Deep down in his bones, where the crack of the cane’d left him unaffected before. This is more private and more cruel. “Don’t worry about it, Chris. Please.”  
  
“I’m not—” Chris bites off the end of that sentence. “You did come to get me. I’m sorry. I’m just—what were you up to, anyway, tonight?”  
  
“Oh.” He contemplates lying, but he’s sore and heart-weary and he doesn’t want to lie to Chris. Abbreviated truth, then. “I had a date.”  
  
“You—” Chris actually claps a hand across his mouth, a gesture that Sebastian’s never seen anyone make in real life; for a fleeting second he’s afraid Chris might be about to be ill. “You had a—and you came when I—what the hell, why didn’t you just tell me to fuck off, you should’ve—”  
  
“It was a fairly unsatisfying date.” He’s found his building and the parking structure thereof. Time to devote too much attention to hunting down the assigned spot he never uses, having no personal vehicle. Not looking at Chris. “It’s fine.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“Don’t.” He can’t take Chris apologizing in that grief-stricken tone for one more second. He doesn’t deserve that. His thighs and ass remind him, as he shifts the car into park, of exactly how much he doesn’t deserve that. “Can you stand up, or would you like a hand?”  
  
Chris now looks even more like illness is imminent. Sebastian sighs—not aloud—and swings his door open and collects his loyal pet umbrella and starts to come around to Chris’s side. Chris derails this plan by forcefully shoving his door open and jumping out. “I don’t need help!”  
  
“Of course you don’t,” Sebastian agrees, and breathes without flinching, because he’s a very good actor sometimes. The parking structure’s cold and full of uncaring metal shapes, this time of night. He eyes a silver-grey Honda Accord past Chris’s left shoulder. Easier. “Come on, then, I’ll get you water.”  
  
“Oh God,” Chris whispers, regarding him with something like horror. “Sebastian, I—”  
  
“Whatever you’re about to say, you don’t have to. The imperfect nature of my evening isn’t your fault.” He puts Chris’s keys into his pocket for the time being. They rattle around and concur. He isn’t lying.  
  
It’s his own fault. All of it: his failure to answer the phone the first time, his pathetic need for company so he’d get out of his head, and look how well that’d worked, he couldn’t even do that—  
  
That _is_ the oncoming avalanche talking, though. Which is unspeakably annoying, since he’d never even got the good parts of subspace before the drop. Just his body reacting to intense experiences and biochemical triggers. Courtesy of canes and denial and control.   
  
Control. Right. He holds himself together enough to put a hand on Chris’s shoulder and navigate them along some stairs and hallways and a right turn under cool pale apartment-building lights. The lights are expensive, a relatively new modern redesign, and they observe wayward stumblings with haughty indifference.  
  
Sebastian does like his building, despite the brand-new hall-light snobbery. He likes his apartment. It’s made of white walls and grey tones and picture windows, and it’s decorated in bookshelves and outer-space whimsy, though not too much. He mostly appreciates the openness. The room. The high ceilings. The city view. Psychologists’d likely mutter about escapism and cramped government-mandated childhood housing and university roommates at Rutgers and a shared flat in London when he’d been doing Shakespeare, and that’s doubtless all true and he wouldn’t even argue, but.   
  
He likes his place. It likes him back, and wraps him up in serene plain walls and expansive quiet.  
  
Chris trails him in without speaking. This is unusual; Sebastian’s getting a little more worried. He throws a desperate glance around, and settles for guiding dejected muscles over to his couch and then running to the kitchen and back, perching his umbrella-companion on a counter along the way. “Water? Orange juice? Chocolate syrup?”  
  
“…chocolate syrup?”  
  
“I put it on things. Ice cream. Waffles. Bananas—oh, I do have bananas, do you—”  
  
“I’m not hungry,” Chris sighs. “I’m not even that drunk. Not really. I’m sorry.”  
  
“For what? Take the water.”  
  
Chris takes the water. Scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m a moron. Tell me about your date. Or—don’t if you don’t want to. Was it at least some sort of funny kind of unsatisfying?”  
  
Sebastian thanks every deity in existence, in every language he knows, that his bedroom door’s firmly shut. Not that he leaves ropes and cock-cages and nipple clamps lying around on a usual day, but this _would_ be the one time he ran out in a hurry and left a giant purple vibrator perched in plain sight, wouldn’t it…  
  
“No,” he evades, “that one’s not much of a story. The first time you called, though, I was busy giving an impromptu lesson about acting and fantasy wardrobe to several teenagers…”  
  
“You were?” Chris asks, and Sebastian ends up telling that story, himself and acting-workshop students and notes from the _Once Upon a Time_ set and the importance of learning to move properly in costume because otherwise one might get stuck in one’s fairytale coat during a grand gesture, and Chris laughs and smiles and finishes off the water, and for a second or two the night feels enchanted around them. The way it should be. Just right, just for them.  
  
They sit on his couch smiling at each other, then. No words, only the crisp after-rain crackle in the air. The nearness of hands, when Chris leans forward to set the water-bottle down.  
  
Sebastian forgets to exhale.   
  
Chris looks at him more deeply, head tilted a bit, eyebrows drawing together; like he’s contemplating a movement, or the most important line of his most important script, or the revelation of a secret. What he comes up with is, “…you heard me say I wasn’t _that_ drunk, yeah?”  
  
“Um,” Sebastian says, “yes,” and gets up off his couch. “But it’s late anyway, and you need something to sleep in, you can’t sleep in jeans—” And he flees to his bedroom, because he is a coward and in love with Chris Evans, whom he can never and will never have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy endings--and also actual porn!--in the last chapter! Promise! Should be up tomorrow or Wednesday.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day late, but...some Personal Stuff happened. Enjoy!

Chris follows him into the bedroom. Of course Chris does. Chris has been drinking and has lowered inhibitions and Sebastian’s forgotten to kick the door shut and practically bolted on the heels of a comfortable friendly shared moment.   
  
Friendly. Yes. They’re friends. Sebastian dives into his dresser drawers. Not the ones on the left. Which are, thank God, closed completely. And there’re no wrist or ankle cuffs lying on the bed, or—okay, there’s his tie, the one that’d been a makeshift gag, but that’s innocuous to anyone who doesn’t know better, so— “Here, pajama pants—you don’t mind Iron Man—?”   
  
“Feel like I ought to be insulted.” And, oh, Chris is right there, at his shoulder, warmth radiating along Sebastian’s back, soaking like sunshine into his skin. “But, Sebastian. We—just now, that was—”   
  
“I wasn’t running away from you!”   
  
“No, I didn’t think—I mean, should I have—oh, shit, did I scare you or something—”   
  
“What? No!”   
  
“Good, because, um, I never want you to—you know I would never—you don’t need that—”   
  
“I grew up with Communism,” Sebastian snaps, frayed emotions giving way under last-straw pressure, “not abuse, I haven’t even had that nightmare since—”   
  
_ “Nightmare?” _   
  
Well. Fuck. “Well,” he mutters, “fuck.”   
  
“You have nightmares?”   
  
“No.” He stares fiercely at the corner of his bed. At the messy blue terrain of his unmade sheets. “Not plural. Not—I told you. Not for years. I’m _fine.”_   
  
“Sebastian,” Chris murmurs, a plea. “Please.”   
  
“You don’t want to—”   
  
“What if I do?”   
  
Sebastian watches the closest sheet-hill. It remains immobile, because it’s only woven cotton. No input to give. “I used to be scared. About this life. About fitting in. About being—not good enough. Here. And—don’t laugh, I know it’s stupid, I always knew, even in the dream I know—sometimes he shows up and says I’m not. Good enough. That it was a mistake and they’re sending me back to Constanţa and I was never meant to have any of this. And I know he’s right. In that dream.”   
  
“He…”   
  
“I never see his face. Only the uniform.” He’s not going to cry in front of Chris. He’s not. “I know it doesn’t work like that. Immigration. Deportation. I’m not an idiot.”   
  
“I didn’t think you were.” Chris’s voice shakes. “I don’t think you are. I think you don’t know how—how strong you are. How fuckin’ good enough you _are._ ”   
  
“You don’t need to make me feel better.”   
  
Chris swears out loud, blasphemous and angry. “I’m not. I’m fuckin’ _not._ Listen to me. You came to get me tonight. When you thought I needed help. And you’re letting me stay here, and giving me your clothes—”   
  
“I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do—”   
  
“You want to be here,” Chris repeats.   
  
“I said so!”   
  
“You…came to get me. When I called.”   
  
“Of course I did.”   
  
“You did come,” Chris says again. Like a wish nearly granted, like a question that might have a _yes_ waiting at the end. “I mean, I hoped you—but I didn’t think—Anthony said you would and I said I wasn’t sure and I told him not to and he called you to find out and he was right, because you did—”   
  
“Wait.” Sebastian stands very still, arms full of freshly laundered pajama pants, because that’s what a person does upon getting stabbed through the heart. “You and Anthony had—some sort of bet? At the bar? On me?”   
  
Chris’s mouth falls open. “No—that’s not what—oh fuck—”   
  
“Oh,” Sebastian says, or thinks he says. He’s not sure he’s made any sound. Ice-spears in his lungs now. His throat. Everyplace going numb, and the scent of fabric softener’s cloying in his nose.    
  
He sets the pajama pants on the foot of his bed. The pajama pants are stupid. And he’s stupid. And he feels twelve years old again, stumbling over hidden pitfalls in a second brand-new language in a second brand-new country, clumsy with the hurt of being alone.   
  
“I’ll just,” he says, “leave these. Here. And you can have the bed.” His voice sounds wrong in his ears, though he’s trying hard to make it sound right. “I’ll be—” A step, a gesture. The other room. The door. A place where he can’t see the inevitable pity—or worse, mockery—on Chris’s face.   
  
Of course Chris knows how he feels. Of course Anthony knows. They must’ve known all along. And they’d made some sort of joke out of how quickly he’d rush to Chris’s side.   
  
Even walking hurts. He’d not expected that; and he nearly loses his balance, tripping over nothing at all.    
  
“Sebastian—” Chris’s voice. Cracking. Horrified. “No, no, fuck, no, don’t leave, please don’t—”   
  
“Were you ever even drunk, tonight? And I think I probably should.”    
  
“No!” Chris lunges a step closer, narrowly avoiding the bedpost. “Listen, Seb, we didn’t—oh God I guess we did, but it wasn’t like that, we weren’t—we didn’t think—” More swearing, colorful and self-directed. “Anthony said he was sick of watching us pine after each other like, um, lovesick teenage idiots, his words, and he was gonna do something about it and he called you and I—I _wanted_ you to come, didn’t you hear me? It wasn’t a bet, it never was, it was serious for me—”   
  
“Stop.” Sebastian’s own voice breaks. He puts a hand on the doorframe. It supports his pain with wooden concern. “I don’t know what you want me to say, and—”   
  
“I don’t want you to say what you think I want you to say!” Chris flings out a hand. Sebastian, caught by the honest anguish in that voice, turns back.   
  
Chris’s hand doesn’t so much grab for his as collide with it. His arm, in fact. Squarely over a rope-burn, a bruise.   
  
He can’t hold back the flinch, the gasp in his inhale.    
  
Chris freezes.   
  
The whole world freezes as well, a flashpoint tableau of intimate pain.   
  
Chris, as if in a dream, comes slowly closer. Takes Sebastian’s unresisting hand in his, and uses cautious fingers to coax up one concealing long sleeve.   
  
And his face drains of color. Shocked.   
  
“It isn’t—” Sebastian gives up. Futile. Even that sentence doesn’t know where it’s going.    
  
Chris’s eyes widen, then narrow. The muscle along his jaw tenses: superheroic outrage over mistreatment of a friend. “How bad is it?”   
  
Please don’t ask, Sebastian wants to say. Please let me be alone. He knows Chris won’t. Chris Evans is a good person and a kind man, and Chris will never in a million years walk away if a friend is wounded.    
  
He wants to curl up small somewhere utterly forgettable and stay quiet and tiny until he remembers how to breathe. All that he manages is, “Please.”    
  
Chris lets his wrist go, movement simultaneously tender and terrified, like he’s afraid one wrong motion’ll shatter Sebastian like glass. Their eyes meet, and then Chris is talking again, words spilling out like a flood from a broken dam, shaking his head. “I can’t. I—I can’t just—I’m sorry, I’ll leave you alone if you say you want that, but I have to know—you’re hurt, someone hurt you, someone _did_ this to you, I have to know you’re okay—”   
  
And then comprehension, abrupt as a bullet: “You said date—you had a—did he fuckin’ hurt you? Or she? Or whoever—tell me who it was, tell me what you want me to do, I’ll—”   
  
So that Chris doesn’t sprint out to enact angry Boston-boy vengeance on the innocent, Sebastian hastily blurts out, “He didn’t—it was consensual!” and then slams his eyes shut in terrible mortification, but can’t resist peeking at the reaction out of a morbid desire to watch inevitable disgust unfold.   
  
“It was…” Chris’s lips shape the _oh_ with no sound. Chris’s fingers stretch out for his wrist, possibly unconsciously, as if drawn back to his skin by instinct, and touch his arm. Right over the closest rope-mark. A caress to burning skin.   
  
Sebastian feels the inhale quiver on his lips. Sensation billowing through his body. Radiance flooding up his arm and down his spine. Every nerve ending alight, raw and open and laid bare. Chris gazes from his wrist, the spot where they’re touching, to his face. Takes a breath, releases it. “Did he hurt you?”   
  
Sebastian opens his mouth.    
  
Chris swiftly amends, “I know you said it was consensual. I’m trying to—to get that. I swear I’m trying. But that sounded like it hurt, just now, and I barely touched you, and—and if this guy’s really hurting you, I mean in ways you don’t, um, y’know, want—you _did_ fuckin’ say unsatisfying, your date, and those bruises look—if you—”   
  
“I’m all right, I swear—”   
  
“If you were mine,” Chris finishes, “and you got hurt, even if we—even if we, um, did that together—I’d never fucking leave your side, after,” and then they stare at each other for a while while those words hover meaningfully in the night and bounce loudly off bedposts and dresser drawers.   
  
Sebastian’s heartbeat pounds in his ears. In the pulsepoint of his wrist. Where Chris hasn’t stopped touching him.   
  
He echoes, barely aware of it, “If I were yours…”   
  
Chris swallows hard. “I…that came out…I don’t know why that came out like that. I’m not that—I’ve never wanted to be all possessive and—hell. I feel like I should be saying I’m sorry. Like I should feel like saying I’m sorry. But…”   
  
“But…?”   
  
“But you don’t want me to.” Chris wraps his hand around Sebastian’s naked wrist. Fingers folding close, biting down. Slow. Deliberate. Controlled. “Am I right?”   
  
Sebastian’s knees threaten to give way. To spill him to the floor like molten honey. It’s more of a moan than a word, when it comes out. “Yes.”   
  
Chris nods. “Thought so. And…the hell of it is…I don’t want to either. To apologize. Not for that.”   
  
“I don’t understand,” Sebastian whispers. He doesn’t. Not any of the night. Not with the hurricane of emotions that’ve been knocking him off-balance the entire evening. He wants to cry, and to get on his knees and hide his face in Chris’s hip, and to come apart in Chris’s hands at Chris’s command, and to beg Chris to put both arms around him and never let go.   
  
Chris swallows. Lifts the other hand—so slow, so tentative, telegraphing every move—and cups Sebastian’s face. The hand is big and broad and perfect. “I want you to listen. Okay? Can you do that? And, um. Believe me when I say this. I mean it, all right?”   
  
Sebastian manages a tiny nod. He’d say yes to just about anything with Chris’s hand cradling his face, but this matters, he can feel it. And he wants to know whatever Chris wants to say.   
  
Chris, very clearly, says, “I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since—hell, I don’t even know. Before I figured it out, anyway, when we came back for the second Cap movie and I saw you at the first table read, I walked in and you were talkin’ to Mackie and laughing at something, I don’t even know what, and I wanted to be the person making you laugh. Or just the person next to you, listening. I wanted to see you tonight. I fuckin’ love you.”   
  
“But,” Sebastian says, bewildered, “you can’t—you don’t—but I love you!”   
  
Chris blinks.    
  
“I’ve always,” Sebastian says, “but you never—and you don’t know me, you wouldn’t want me, you’re too—if you knew what I—that tie was just in my mouth and I own a paddle and a hairbrush and you should leave now, you should—”   
  
“I’m not leaving,” Chris says, “I’m holding you,” and puts both arms around him, carefully, not tight.    
  
Sebastian doesn’t cry. Not exactly. He’s shaky after, though, eyelashes wet, and he doesn’t remember when they sank onto the bed. Chris is rubbing his back, unhurried circles. “I’m not sayin’ I’m not kinda surprised. And I guess I—I don’t know why you would. Want this. But I want you. I love you. I’ll say it again if you want.”   
  
“I love you,” Sebastian repeats, and hiccups, and then glares when Chris laughs. “I still don’t know how to—believe you. But if you’re saying it so am I.”    
  
“So we are.” Chris is kneading the back of his neck now, fingers kind and firm. Sebastian lets his head rest against Chris’s shoulder. Exhausted, oddly buoyant, strangely triumphant. It’s out there now. Everything he is. And Chris is here.   
  
Chris kisses the top of his head. “Anthony’s never going to let us live this down, you know. Anyplace on you that isn’t sore? I mean, for kissing purposes.”   
  
“Ah. There? And maybe my nose?”   
  
“Really?” Chris bends down. Brushes lips across the tip of his nose. “I like kissing you. I kind of hate the idea of you getting hurt. If you couldn’t tell.”   
  
“It’s not about the hurt. Or not precisely.” He tips his head up; Chris’s lips find his mouth, landing at the corner, nibbling, curious. “It’s about intensity. About letting go, and being caught. About trust.”   
  
“But you have bruises.”   
  
“It’s…” He thinks for a minute. He’d never expected to be explaining this to Chris. But the night’s defied all his expectations so far. And it’s crazy and beautiful, a dream impossibly true. Because it is a dream, he says, “It’s about giving that much of myself to someone, and knowing that they can do anything to me, with me…but they’ll never hurt me more than I like. It’s like sparring. When we’re in fight training. Bruises, yes, but…good.”   
  
“Adrenaline. Endorphins. Like the runner’s high, kinda.” Chris bites a lip. Considering. “But it’s a turn-on for you.”   
  
“The sort of…heightened sensations, yes. It’s erotic, for me. And the belonging.” He looks down, unable to look at Chris while confessing this part. “Belonging to someone. Feeling like I’m…”   
  
“Good enough,” Chris finishes, almost too softly to be heard. “Safe, and good enough.”   
  
Sebastian, surprised—though he doesn’t know why he is; Chris of everyone understands precisely how difficult feeling that way can be—nods.   
  
Chris strokes his hair. Puts a little pressure into the caress: keeping Sebastian’s head positioned on his shoulder. “I don’t know if I can ever hurt you.”   
  
“I know.” Of course not. Chris is too wholesome, too full of sunshine, for those desires.   
  
“The rest, though…” Chris pets his hair again. “I can feel your heartbeat, y’know. Shh. It’s okay. We’re okay.”   
  
“We’re not—”   
  
“Sebastian, be quiet.”   
  
That’s an order. Delivered mildly, but with authority under the affection.    
  
Sebastian stops talking instantly. He can feel his eyes go wide: pupil dilation, arousal like a tidal wave, swamping him body and soul.   
  
Chris’s eyebrows do the startled swooping-up again. “Huh. Okay. So that works. Good to know.”   
  
“Only sometimes,” Sebastian mutters, leaning into Chris’s hold. “Not on set.” He doesn’t admit that it’d probably work then too, at least if Chris put enough loving force behind an order. He’d end up obeying, and he’d be annoyed about it.   
  
“No,” Chris concurs, and starts playing with his hair, running it through deft fingers. “I wouldn’t ask you for that. Do you mind this? Okay, good, ’cause I like it. Touching you. And we both liked that, before. When I said…what I said…about you being mine.”   
  
“Yes,” Sebastian murmurs. The petting’s making him—not sleepy, but distracted. Spacey. Right now he’s attempting to stay rational, and the internal argument’s wearying.   
  
“I’m not sure I can hurt you.” Chris pauses to touch his arm again, eyes serious. “I won’t say never. If you like that, if you need it…I’d do a hell of a lot for you. But you gotta give me time to get used to it, okay?”   
  
“Yes,” Sebastian whispers back. He can do that. He can wait. For Chris. “Yes, Chris.”   
  
“Oh,” Chris breathes, “listen to you, so good for me,” and there’s wonder in his gaze. Wonder, and concern. “Can you tell me what happened tonight? And I love you. No matter what you say. I’m not leaving you.”   
  
“Oh…thank you…and yes. It wasn’t bad.” He sits up a bit more, abruptly—not embarrassed, Chris knows his secrets now, but shy about voicing the words. It’s only half his story, and he knows he was unfair to the other side of it. “He was trying hard. He’s a friend— _just_ a friend—and I did tell him I wanted to feel it after. It hurt, but I could’ve called it off. I thought, if we kept trying, if he did more…but it never quite…” He waves a hand. “Tipped over. Changed. I don’t know—transformed? When the pain stops being pain, and feels like flying.”   
  
“But it didn’t.” Chris rolls up Sebastian’s left sleeve. Studies irritated red marks. “Not this time. He didn’t notice?”   
  
“He did, but…it was my fault. I couldn’t stop thinking.” To make the awful look in Chris’s eyes ease—and because he wants to confess this—he adds, “Thinking about you.”   
  
Chris’s expression brightens right up, not a hundred percent but on the way there. “Me?”   
  
“Very much you.” He leans forward. It’s the first time he’s initiated the kiss; Chris, after a single startled heartbeat, dives in with gratifying enthusiasm.    
  
They end up tipping backwards across the bed, Sebastian on top but held securely by Chris’s strong arms. The rain explodes into noisy life outside, cheering like mad; wind screeches gleefully past the windowpane, and Sebastian puts his head down on Chris’s chest and listens to that heartbeat under his ear and finds himself winding a hand into Chris’s cream-colored soft henley, clinging, holding on.   
  
“It’s okay,” Chris tells him, Chris whispers, Chris vows, hand settling at the nape of his neck, playing with the short strands of hair as they curl over his fingers. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, you’re mine and I’m here and I’m gonna take care of you when you need it, I love you, I’m here.”   
  
“You love me.”   
  
“And you love me. Which. That’s. I can’t even—you really don’t know how long I’ve been in love with you?” Chris wraps one leg around Sebastian’s: holding on that way too. “I tried bringing you coffee. I couldn’t tell whether you were happy about the caffeine or me. If you have nightmares I want to hold you, not because you need me, you don’t, just ’cause I want to. Better? You aren’t crying…”   
  
“I’m not. I’m only…I don’t know.” He closes his eyes. The rain flings itself at the window and slides down, a fascinated audience. “I do need you, I think.”   
  
“Then I’m here.” Chris’s accent comes out the way it does in moments of emotion, and makes the words incontrovertible. Etched in history-laden stone. “And, hey, I kinda need you too, if you didn’t notice. On the way here. You make everything easier somehow. Is that dumb? Even if it is I mean it.”   
  
“I love you.”   
  
“Love you.” Chris moves a hand, tips Sebastian’s chin up. “Can I see how bad it is? Um, do you want me to make that an order or something? Show me?”   
  
It’s delivered as a question, but it’s Chris making an effort; Chris doesn’t have the same air of command that an experienced Dom would, but Chris means it. It’s that last part that lets Sebastian turn the question into an order in his own head. That works enough for this breakable soap-bubble moment, hovering and fragile in the night.   
  
He slides to his feet. Strips, not as gracefully as he’s capable of but quickly. For Chris.   
  
When he turns, letting Chris see the extent of the marks, he hears the abrupt inhale, the stiffening of posture; he doesn’t move, letting Chris get up and come to him. One hand skims his shoulders, his back, barely making contact; he knows Chris is seeing reddened lines, darker lines, skin never broken but wounded by cane and rope and spankings. The worst of the bruising’s on his ass and thighs; Christopher’d been more forceful there, trying to push him over the edge. His cock and balls hurt, not badly, from prior restraints and from present arousal, blood rushing into abused flesh. He turns his head—not proper protocol, but he needs to see Chris, and Chris won’t know or care—and Chris, standing behind him, leans over his shoulder and kisses him.   
  
That kiss sends shivers all the way to his toes. Sparkles in his bones, along his spine. Chris can look at him like this, and nevertheless will kiss him like that. Like he’s wonderful.   
  
Chris takes his elbow. Turns him so they’re face to face. Chris is still dressed, jeans and that creamy knit shirt, a hint of tantalizing tattoo-ink showing along his collarbone. Sebastian wants to lick that spot, and wonders if he’ll be allowed to.   
  
“What’re you thinking?” Chris sounds amused. “Looking at the ink?”   
  
“Wanting to taste you,” Sebastian says. “If you want to let me.”   
  
Chris’s mouth makes a distressed shape. The rain gets a fraction harder. “I—God. I don’t know if I can do this. Okay. Okay. Can we try it like this? If you want something, especially if you want me, you can say so. I don’t get to tell you what to do.”   
  
Sebastian, through pure determination, does not wince at this. “That’s…kind of the point. Me being yours.”   
  
“I don’t fucking own you!”   
  
“No. You don’t. And I’ll tell you to stop if I need to, and I can ask you for things, but—” He bites his lip. Fresh pain. Stinging. “Try this. If I asked you for something that you weren’t in the mood for, not anything close to your limits, but just that you perhaps had other plans, or perhaps you didn’t want me right at that second, what would you do?”   
  
“Tell you to wait,” Chris says promptly, “and if you’re good, maybe—” And then looks rather shocked.   
  
“Yes,” Sebastian agrees. Simply that.   
  
“Oh.” Chris now looks thoroughly floored. “But—that’s—I didn’t mean—oh.”   
  
“I enjoy being good for you,” Sebastian tells him. “I’ll listen to your orders because that feels good for me. You said I was yours. Let me be that. Yours.”   
  
“Okay.” Chris takes a breath, lets it out. “Okay. I can kinda see that. But this…” A hand hovers over a hip: over cane-blows and mementos. “I don’t know how to feel about this. You like it…”   
  
“Sometimes.” Sebastian’s trying not to lean into the touch too obviously. “If you did it. Making me feel it, making me know it, how much I can take, how far I belong to you…”   
  
“Mine.” Chris sets the hand on his hip. Fingers pressing down over a bruise. Sebastian whimpers; Chris takes in the sound. “You do like that. But you said it never felt good, earlier. With _him._ Do you have something for this? For bruises? Can I take care of you?”   
  
“Oh,” Sebastian breathes. Air leaving his body: those words, phrased that way. “Yes. Lotion, top drawer on the left…numbing, mostly, but it’ll help the skin heal…”   
  
Chris’s fingers bite down harder. Sebastian gasps. “You’re telling me you had something to help and you didn’t use it?”   
  
“I—”   
  
“Not real pleased with you,” Chris muses, “about that,” and Sebastian’s knees buckle. Chris catches him effortlessly. “Go get it. Your lotion.”   
  
“Oh God,” Sebastian says, in Romanian, worshipful and terrified and elated.   
  
“Hmm,” Chris purrs, holding him up, holding him close; falling into the role, but with concern and love shining through assumed authority. Sebastian wants to stay right there, protected by that gaze, forever. “Okay, but if it’s important, say it in English. If you can’t talk to me, we’re not gonna do _anything,_ clear?”   
  
_ “Da?” _   
  
“Brat.” But Chris is laughing, reassured. “That was yes, right?”   
  
“Yes, Chris.”   
  
“Get me your lotion,” Chris demands, nudging him upright, “and then I’m going to take care of you, and you’re going to let me.”   
  
Sebastian, smiling—lightness everyplace, like floating, like joy—goes.

When he comes back, bottle in hand, Chris is looking at him speculatively. The rain’s subsided into a persistent drumming cadence on rooftops, and the bedroom’s dry and enclosed and familiar and new. He’s done this so many times, and he’s never done this before. Not with Chris.    
  
“Actually,” Chris decides, “I’ve changed my mind. Um, I can do that, right?”   
  
“If you’re going to leave now—” It’ll kill him. He might go on breathing and walking around, but he’ll be drowning with every breath.    
  
But he’s pretty sure Chris doesn’t mean that. Not at this point. Though he isn’t sure what Chris _does_ mean.   
  
“Of course I’m fucking not,” Chris says, “do you even fucking listen to yourself, Christ, no, whoever told you you weren’t worth adoring every damn minute of every damn day—” and then goes on for several ferocious profanity-laden minutes about punching evildoers and kissing the ground Sebastian walks on and going stargazing on a first date and how Sebastian’s brighter than all the stars anyway. Sebastian kind of loses track of the specific words. The emotion’s overwhelming, and it’s for him.   
  
“—and I’ll buy you blueberry bagels if you’re sad and also throw them at people if anyone says anything to hurt you,” Chris finishes. “Were you even listening?”   
  
“Mostly. You love me.”   
  
“I do. I was being romantic.”   
  
“And defending my honor with blueberry bagels. I know you weren’t going to leave. I mean…I didn’t think you would. I’m sorry.”   
  
Chris mock-scowls at him. “Damn right. I should spank you for that.”   
  
“…would you?”   
  
“I really just said that, didn’t I?—come here.” Chris takes the lotion out of his unresisting hand and sets it atop the dresser. “We’ll get to that. But this…you walking around, like this…” A hand on his forearm, another on his ass, yanking him close. Sebastian gasps, stumbles, catches himself with arms around Chris’s neck. Chris grins. “I don’t like this. You with someone else’s bruises on you. If you’re gonna have marks they’re gonna be mine.”   
  
“Oh God yes please—”   
  
“I like that too,” Chris announces, “you saying yes to me,” and kisses him like thunder, like the breaking of a dam, nothing held back. Tongue teasing his lips, licking into his mouth, devouring the answering gasp. Chris’s lips wandering along his jaw, his throat. Leaving imprints like brands; scorching, Sebastian thinks, forever. He moans as Chris winds a hand into his hair; he tips his head back instinctively, and Chris kisses his neck, beard and teeth rasping over his skin. He quivers, weak-kneed with pleasurable prickles; Chris pauses to glance at his face, and then does it again. Harder.   
  
Coherent thought flies away, at that; Sebastian arches his body against Chris’s, begging for more. Chris obliges, teeth and pressure enough to sting. Sebastian’s entire body glows with arousal, liquid and malleable as the rain.    
  
Chris breathes out, hot huff of air over the mark he’s just left. Touches a thumbtip there. Tracing edges. “This…you’ll have to wear your scarves. Keeping it covered. For a few days.” He adds, before Sebastian’s scrambled brain can summon words: “I kinda like that idea. You walking around in public like this, lookin’ adorable and sweet, nobody knowing…but you’ll know. And I’ll know. Mine.”   
  
Sebastian’s thoroughly unable to unearth a reply. Particularly when Chris’s thumb digs into the center of the bruise. Hard.   
  
He sobs something that might’ve once been Chris’s name but doesn’t make it out. Chris kisses him on the lips, firm and quick. Then walks him bodily over to the bed and eases him down onto his back. “Does this hurt?”   
  
He needs a moment to figure out why the question. “…no, Chris.”   
  
“You’d tell me if it did.” A question, for all that it’s a statement; Chris needs the reassurance, he understands. Adrift in the glow, he stretches up a hand, touches the nearest powerful bicep. “I would. I’m fine.”   
  
“Hmm…” Chris pulls off shirt, jeans, boxer shorts, flinging them into a careless pile on the floor. Sebastian lies lazily across his bed and appreciates the show. He’s a bit sore, and he’ll be more so later, but he’s felt worse. And Chris put him here, and he’s glorying in that.   
  
Chris asks, diving onto the bed between Sebastian’s thighs in a pounce of improbable muscle, “Do we need, um, I don’t know, words? Like, safewords?”   
  
“Oh. I…oh, fuck…”    
  
“Sorry.” Chris stops nuzzling at his left hipbone. “You’re fuckin’ beautiful. Can’t resist. I’ll stop distracting you.”   
  
“Don’t you dare. I use—if you want a proper safeword it’s ‘winter’—”   
  
“Seriously?”   
  
“Say anything and you don’t get to kiss me. Standard stoplights, though, for checking in. Green, yellow, red…oh God do that again.”   
  
Chris laughs against his knee. Runs his tongue along the sensitive line of Sebastian’s inner thigh, a tantalizing wet stripe of want. “Thought I was in charge.”   
  
“Chris,” Sebastian says, and Chris lifts his head. Their eyes meet, and stay. “Those work for you too. Green, yellow, or red.”   
  
And Chris breathes out, and smiles a little, and kisses his leg once more: unvoiced reply.    
  
And then apparently decides to get back to reinforcing that in-charge role. Suction, friction, nipping and biting; that’s going to be one more bruise, or two, love-marks etched along his inner thigh where he’ll feel them for days, blood rushing to the surface, and how did he never imagine how good Chris would be at this, those few times he allowed himself _to_ imagine—   
  
He’s practically sobbing, dizzy with need; his hips lift off the bed, and Chris clamps one big hand over the closest thigh to hold him down and licks the crease between thigh and hip, and Sebastian’s brain shortcircuits at the combined pleasure and command. Chris turns his head and shifts position and that talented mouth closes around Sebastian’s straining cock, no hesitation; Sebastian actually flings an arm across his own mouth to muffle the desperate cry of want. Chris licks at him and sucks at him and does things Sebastian can’t begin to process, lost in the unending sensual onslaught; Sebastian falls apart as Chris takes him to pieces, and Chris is inexorable about undoing him.   
  
He’s fighting hard not to come, to wait until told, to be good—it’s hard, so hard, when his body’s shaking with it, riding the waves of earlier denial and pain and present bliss. He’s clutching that single idea— _don’t come don’t come not yet not until he says be good for him_ —so tightly that he doesn’t hear his name right away, not until the sensations stop.   
  
Trembling, he opens both eyes. Finds Chris regarding him gravely, mouth teasing the head of his cock but letting up on the intensity. Chris asks, each word brushing over superheated skin like silk, “You know I want you to come, right?”   
  
Sebastian opens his mouth. No words present themselves upon the blank white tingling slate that’s currently his mind.   
  
Chris kisses the tip of his cock. Right there, over the leaking needy slit. “Oh. Got it. Okay, hang on, I can put it a different way. I want you to come. I want you to come for me, like this. That’s me, um, giving you an order. And you want to be good for me, you want to do what I say, so I’m telling you to come, just like this, let me see you, let me taste you, come on, you’re so good, you can…”   
  
It’s the words. The words and the praise and Chris’s mouth hot against his rigid cock and Chris’s eyes, blue as topaz, honest as gemstones, looking into his.    
  
The orgasm takes him by surprise, like a shock of summer rain, like a blossoming monsoon. He spills out his release without even moving, pours it across Chris’s lips and his own stomach; the climax floods through him and leaves him limp and dazed, mindless with receding oscillations of bliss. His hips jerk involuntarily, a miniature echo of the first peak: Chris is licking him, kindly laps of authoritative tongue. He loses some time then, flying.   
  
He awakens because he’s being alternately kissed and gently nudged back to consciousness, Chris’s fingertips tapping his cheek. “Hey. Sebastian. Still with me? Come on, wake up, tell me whether I should be worried…”   
  
Sebastian opens both eyes. His whole body feels languid, spun out into pink cotton-candy clouds. Chris is inches away, peeking at him, obviously trying not to be too anxious; the concern eases when Boston-harbor eyes realize he’s awake. “Hey. I love you. Are you okay?”   
  
Sebastian nods. Chris sighs, smiles, keeps one hand cupping his face, thumb rubbing along his skin. “Is that like a thing? I mean, kind of a compliment, I haven’t done that in fuckin’ years, but I don’t actually want you to pass out on me. Can you talk?”   
  
Sebastian, after considering possible responses, lifts a hand, tilts it: back and forth. Chris laughs, albeit with apprehension in the sound. “That’s a no?”   
  
“Sort of.” He’s distracted by the warm length of Chris pressed close along his side. That feels good. And the blue cotton of his sheets feels good, and the shimmer of rain and sex in the air feels good. Every nerve ending simultaneously hyperaware and distant. Far-off rainbows, swirling and full of light. “Green. _Verde._ We might have to talk about subspace…”   
  
“Huh.” Chris wriggles against him, adjusting positions. Chris is still hard; the line of his erection pokes into Sebastian’s hip, though his voice is almost plaintive. “I’m guessing that’s a good thing. You look all…happy. Are you happy?”   
  
“Very,” Sebastian tells him, and reaches for him. Chris is hard and hasn’t gotten off and that’s not fair. Chris has made him feel incredible. He wants to make Chris feel this way too, rainbows and all.    
  
His fingers brush Chris’s chest, exploring a flat nipple, a plane of muscle; he’s not terribly coordinated, and Chris smiles and captures his hand, playing with his fingers, tucking them up and unfolding them again. “You want to touch me?”   
  
“You feel nice,” Sebastian says. It’s true. “And I love you.”   
  
“God, you’re amazing,” Chris says, kissing captive fingers, taking one into his mouth, surrounding it in heat. Sebastian, overcome by the attention and the praise, closes his eyes and turns his head, not far, just needing a second to hide; Chris makes a small distressed sound and kisses his jaw, the side of his chin. “Was that wrong? Did I say something—”   
  
“No.” Sebastian comes back a little. “You’re too—too good, I can’t—it’s too much. Or not. I don’t know. I’m not—what you said.”   
  
Chris stares at him. And then pushes him to his back and sprawls atop him, weight used to resolute advantage, pinning him down. “You can hear me, right?”   
  
“…yes?”   
  
“Then you can damn well hear this. You’re amazing. You’re the fuckin’ best person I know, and you’re good on a movie set and you’re good for me right now, _so_ good, and I love you, and you’re going to believe that, that is a fucking order, clear?”   
  
Sebastian, lost in fierce blue eyes and the full force of that protective outrage, feels his body stir. Reacting instinctively, even though he’s still coming down from the previous climax. “Yes, sir.”   
  
“Say my name.”   
  
“Chris.”   
  
Chris nods. Then sits up, so he’s more or less straddling Sebastian’s hips, fluid tattoo-ink and gymnast’s muscles and huge upright cock on display. Sebastian moans softly. His own spent cock twitches, trying to fill. Chris notices. “You want more? You want me to show you exactly how much I want you?”   
  
“Please—”   
  
“You want me to make you come again?” Chris takes his cock in hand, vulnerable flesh lying in strong fingers. The grip’s assertive; not hard, but he’s tender already, and the sight and sensation together open up something raw and new and deep inside him, final walls he’d not even known existed starting to crumble. “I think you can. I think I want to see you come from my cock inside you. _Mine._ ”   
  
And Sebastian’s crying, not violent but tranquil; he knows he is because his cheeks feel wet, but he’s not scared or hurt. He’s relieved and safe and comforted: this is right, this is where he needs to be. Belonging to Chris.   
  
Who hesitates, letting him go, leaning down to bump their noses together. “Color?”   
  
“Green,” Sebastian gets out. “Yes, yours, please…”   
  
“Okay. Just checking.” Chris swipes a thumb over his cheekbone, cleaning away tear-tracks. “We’re not hurting you too much? I mean, from earlier?”   
  
“N-no…”   
  
“You said you need to feel it.” Chris glances around the room. “Give me your hands.” When Sebastian does, Chris kisses his palms quickly—the roughness of beard tickles, and Sebastian laughs, and Chris laughs too and nips at his right index finger, a hint of scolding—and then guides his hands to rest on the pillow above his head. “Can you keep them there? Or do you have cuffs or something?”   
  
“Third drawer…on the left…no, the other left, the actual left…”   
  
“Don’t mock my sense of direction,” Chris says cheerfully, “when I’m about to tie you up. Or whatever. Huh.” The _huh_ is either because he’s found the wrong drawer and a few more exotic items, or because he’s found the right one and figured out that Sebastian owns four different versions of more and less painful wrist cuffs. Sebastian can’t quite tell without moving.   
  
Chris comes back with the most decadent option, which isn’t a surprise. Sebastian doesn’t protest, only lets Chris tuck his wrists into sheepskin-lined midnight-blue leather without quibble. The cuffs wrap around his skin like clouds, and he falls further into gilded tranquility, accepting.   
  
“Yknow,” Chris ponders, running fingers along his forearms, over the pulses of veins, “you’re gonna have to show me some of this stuff. If you like it, I want to know. I want to find out everything you like, and do it all. Over and over, too, until you’re screaming my name. It’s kinda funny, I never would’ve guessed, always told people you were the sweetest kid in the world, and I felt so goddamn dirty sometimes going back to my hotel room, thinking about bending you over and fucking you in the shower…but here you are with handcuffs and ball gags. Lookin’ at me.”   
  
“Chris,” Sebastian whispers.   
  
Chris walks exploring fingers down to his chest. Gets familiar with a nipple: pinching, twisting, rolling it between thumb and forefinger. Sebastian whimpers, and loves it. Chris pinches again, more roughly. “You still are, though, aren’t you? That sweet kid. Wanting to be good. For me. Whatever I want to do with you.”   
  
Sebastian nods. Beyond words, as Chris’s hand sparks delicious fire from his body; but he needs to show the yes, the eagerness, his readiness to comply.   
  
Chris stops tormenting his nipple in order to kiss it, replacing one sensory input with another. Sebastian very nearly passes out from the collision of signals. Chris lifts his head, and offers, humor wryly apparent, “That was all right, right? I’m pretty much makin’ this up on the spot.”   
  
One word. He can find that. Maybe two. “—love you.”   
  
The rain rustles down beyond the window-glass, smooth and silky. Chris’s lips are warm when they kiss his. “I love you. I always have.” Out in the night, so late it’s morning, the sounds of the city fade into the storm. They make a melody of electric life, humming and splashing away.   
  
Chris rests a hand on his stomach, not touching his cock even though it’s jutting upward and swelling even further, ready to go off a second time. Sebastian relaxes into the touch and the denial equally. Whatever Chris wants to do with him. Yes.   
  
“Said I’d take care of you,” Chris murmurs, and hops off the bed, opens a drawer—if Sebastian could focus, he’d be certain now that Chris made some inadvertent discoveries before—and returns. “We need a condom?”   
  
“Not if you don’t want…” He loses English verbiage as Chris cups his balls, toying, fondling the drawn-up weight. “I haven’t…I didn’t…”   
  
“You didn’t get around to fucking him, tonight?” Chris’s hand tightens: not quite a warning. “No one else?”   
  
“No, no, please—” Chris’s fingers delve further back, taking possession of private spaces, hidden spots. Sebastian helplessly spreads his legs wider. “We did those physicals, last month—no one since—”   
  
“Part of the contract, yeah, I remember.” Chris skims fingers over his hole; the muscle flutters as Sebastian groans. Marvel’d wanted to ensure the health and wellbeing of their actors. They’d all gone in. “Same here. No one else. Which means I get to fuck you bare, kid, get to come inside you, fill you up with me…”   
  
“Oh—” Sebastian says, a tiny bitten-off cry, and something that’s not quite an orgasm washes through him: a rippling swell of euphoria that builds and crests and drains, leaving him dazed and tremulous. His cock’s heavy and dripping, he can feel droplets smearing across his stomach, but it’s almost an afterthought now.   
  
He’s hypersensitive in the wake of that peak, and all at once Chris’s slow touch is maddening; he whimpers, cries, twists his wrists inside the cuffs. Chris says, “Shh,” and slips a finger into him, slick with lube and easy, and Chris’s other hand settles flat below his belly button, keeping him still. Sebastian sobs, frustrated, needing more, needing _Chris;_ Chris swears under his breath and promises, “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you, just a little more, God, Sebastian, if you could see this, my fingers in you—”   
  
The fingers—two or three now, he can’t tell—twist and crook up and hit that spot, sliding over it. Sebastian does scream Chris’s name, then. Can’t help it. Can’t hold the sounds in.   
  
Chris doesn’t let up, working that spot now that he’s found it; Sebastian writhes and sobs and keens and shoves his hips back into Chris’s hand, beyond shame, dizzy with ecstasy and the closeness of Chris inside him.   
  
“So good,” Chris is saying, “so fuckin’ gorgeous, look at you—tell me you want me to fuck you, please—”   
  
“ _Da_ —yes, I mean yes, Chris, please, please fuck me—” He’s babbling now, barely aware of what he’s saying. Chris pulls fingers out and lines himself up. Sebastian looks up, panting, sweating, trembling; Chris looks down at him and says again, “I love you,” and moves.   
  
Chris is enormous. Sebastian’s body opens up around him, slippery with lube and prepared by those fingers; but even so, he can’t contain the gasp as his muscles struggle to accommodate the girth. Chris freezes, plainly concerned; Sebastian practically wails in frustration, and tries to pull him deeper, pleading little movements of hips: more more more, further, harder, please…   
  
“Shh,” Chris tells him again, “stay still, don’t push, relax for me, you’re doing so well, you feel so good, God, I can’t even—no, don’t move, I’m giving you an order, we’re not gonna hurt you, _don’t move,_ okay? Here…” One hand sneaks between them to find Sebastian’s neglected cock, with deliberate measured strokes: not fast, only a source of distraction, leisurely caresses that tumble him deeper into mingled pleasure and pain. Chris moves inside him in tiny thrusts, each one a fraction deeper; Sebastian sighs and calms, grounded by Chris’s voice and hands.   
  
Chris keeps up the litany of praise, talking him through the discomfort; he likes that, he thinks, the gentleness and the hint of rougher bright-edged fire. He feels his body yield even more, giving way as Chris claims him; one final push, and Chris is in him completely, buried to the hilt. Chris whispers his name, sounding awed. Sebastian quivers under him, looking up at him, feeling taken and possessed and cherished.   
  
Chris kisses him once more and moves, drawing back, thrusting. Sebastian tries to move with him, but loses the rhythm when Chris’s cock strikes that bundle of nerves, making him arch his back, hands tensing in their cuffs. Chris keeps up that angle, purposefully now. Sebastian’s cock, caught between them, rubs across his stomach; the added friction makes his mind go utterly empty, no thought left, only devastating sensation.   
  
His head rolls across the pillow, his mouth making small sounds, not quite under his control; Chris braces himself on one arm and lifts the other hand, cradling Sebastian’s face, touching his throat where the mark of that burning kiss must be visible. Sebastian shudders with yearning; Chris presses a thumb into the center of it, wraps fingers around his throat, holds him there.   
  
Sebastian’s body lights up. Billowing radiance. That, yes. Even that. He belongs to Chris, all of him, even the air he breathes. He knows he’s clenching around that cock inside him, knows Chris must know how he feels.   
  
Chris stops moving. Lifts the hand: touches Sebastian’s lips, cheekbone, eyebrow. “Look at me.”   
  
He does.   
  
Chris swallows. “You…you would…you’d let me…”   
  
He nods again.   
  
“Do you _want_ me to?”   
  
“Please,” Sebastian whispers.    
  
Chris takes a breath—looks as if he’s extremely aware of that breath—and lets it out. “I—think I want to. But—um, you’ll kick me or something, make me stop, if I’m—if I’m hurting you?”   
  
This is important; Sebastian knows that even from inside the glittering ecstasy-tangle where he’s currently adrift. He knows how far Chris has come for him, with him, tonight; he can hear those difficult emotions in that admission. And he knows that what he says now does matter.    
  
For them both. For Chris, who loves him; and for himself, the person who wants this, who’s not the same lonely person he’d been a few short hours ago.   
  
He says, pulling words out of the cool storm-laden air like a magic trick he’ll only be able to do once before he forgets how to talk, “I promise, Chris.”   
  
“I love you,” Chris says, poised above him.    
  
Sebastian tries to say “I love you too,” but Chris is kissing him again, wild and rough and elated; he doesn’t get more than a syllable out, and that’s wonderful, everything’s wonderful, Chris’s cock slides and thrusts inside him and Chris’s tongue plunders his mouth and he gives up all over again, surrendered to joy.   
  
Chris pulls back, gets that broad hand wrapped around his throat again. More certain this time. More weight. Not both hands; Sebastian can breathe, but it’s a struggle. That comprehension plus the lack of air goes straight to his cock and everywhere else too, arousal immediate and infinite. Chris, watching his face, looks reverent.   
  
Chris fucks him that way, hand on his throat, cock deep inside him; Sebastian at first simply drifts amid the pleasure, letting each movement lift him and carry him along, magnified to impossible heights by the lack of air. Gradually that ecstasy multiplies, doubling back and building upon itself; his body can’t handle the intensity, shuddering, tensing, clamping down around Chris’s iron length, unable to remain still. Chris groans. Speeds up. Pounding more erratic. Harder. Faster. Chris’s eyes meet his; Sebastian, through the luminous haze, looks back. So much blue, so fierce, so loving. His eyelashes want to flutter shut, his head to loll; he keeps his eyes open. He wants to see Chris.   
  
Chris groans again—might be Sebastian’s name, or a yes, or simply love—and squeezes. Hard. No air left. And Chris’s cock hammers into that firework-spot inside him, explosions as his body shakes, and Chris’s voice commands, low and close to his ear, “Come for me, now—”   
  
He does, or thinks he does. Like nothing he’s ever felt before. Like he’s dying in little golden pieces, aureate and white-hot and haloed. Inescapable and shattering and numinous. He can feel everything: his own release pouring out between their stomachs, Chris coming too and spilling inside him in continuous pulses, pulses that inundate that too-sensitive place in him with heat and wetness. Maybe he comes again. Maybe it never stops, titanic waves that gather and break and go on breaking, on and on…   
  
He never precisely loses consciousness, though he’s only vaguely aware of the world for a while. Chris collapsed atop him, a pleasant panting weight. Chris saying his name, over and over, like a prayer. Chris withdrawing from his body as a trickle of wetness follows. Sebastian’s legs fall open, limp. Chris says something else, and then holds him, cradling him, making small shaken damp sounds.   
  
Sebastian realizes slowly that Chris is crying. This is not a good thing. He opens his eyes. Chris’s breath catches. “Seb—”   
  
“Shh,” Sebastian tells him, very carefully, trying to reach toward his face. The cuffs are off, but his limbs don’t want to obey. “ _Te iubesc.”_   
  
“…what?” Chris takes his clumsy hand and kisses it. “I’m not—I’m okay, I just—what I did, what I fuckin’ did to you—”   
  
“I love you.” His throat aches, but it’s an ache he wants. “What I said. Just now.”   
  
“I love you.” Chris closes both eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”   
  
“You’re perfect,” Sebastian says, and tips his head up to kiss Chris on the lips. The angle’s somewhat awkward, as he’s presently being frantically cuddled by acres of muscle and tattoos and long legs, but it works. “I’m fine. And you were…what was your word…amazing.”   
  
“Your voice—” Chris puts out a hand, lifts Sebastian’s chin, tilts his head to inspect the throat-bruise. “I hurt you.”   
  
“The way I wanted,” Sebastian says. “I would have stopped you.” He lets the truth of that be evident in his gaze, when Chris stops staring at the bruise and goes back to staring at him. “And you—you wanted that too…” His voice wobbles a bit despite his best efforts. If Chris is disgusted after all, rejecting these desires now that the moment’s over…   
  
“I did,” Chris whispers. “I do. What does that make me?”   
  
“A good person,” Sebastian tells him, curling up into his arms. He’s cold, aftermath sinking in; Chris instinctively folds all that heat around him and kisses his hair. Chris, Sebastian thinks, is kind of a perfect Dom. This may be biased, considering all the love. Doesn’t matter. Not when Chris is perfect for him. “We both consented. We both want this. You gave us that.”   
  
“I think you gave us that,” Chris sighs, but the tension’s fading. “I told you I’d take care of you.”   
  
“You did.” He puts his head on Chris’s shoulder. “You are. Right now.”   
  
Chris is quiet for a minute or two. The rain’s quiet also: not gone, but landing in stray droplets and patters, plopping off eaves and tree-branches at odd moments. The bed’s a mess, sticky spots and a pillow on the floor. Chris’s chest is warm and sturdy and good to lean against. Sebastian thinks that this is being happy, being loved; and he smiles.   
  
Chris looks down at him. “What’re you thinking?”   
  
“Oh…nothing, really.” He shrugs as best he can while ensconced in determined arms. “I’m comfortable.”   
  
“I did tell you I’d take care of you,” Chris says. “I could…your lotion…should we shower? Before lotion. But you said numbing, your lotion, and if you’re sore, I mean, I could—do you need anything? Water? Um, food? Like…I don’t know. Your bananas. Blueberries. I think I can do this. I want to do this. I love you.”   
  
“I’m very glad I came to get you,” Sebastian says, “tonight. Also I love you. I don’t in fact have any blueberries.”   
  
“But they’re your favorite.” Chris sounds endearingly dismayed by this lack of small sweet fruit. “I can buy you some. Tomorrow. I’m glad you came to get me too, is that weird to say, I fuckin’ am, though. I don’t know what I’m doing and I want to do it all with you.”   
  
“I like having my hair washed,” Sebastian says, tracing a heart on Chris’s chest, left-handed, “in the shower. I like being taken care of and cleaned up, after. Sometimes I want to get on my knees and wash your legs and kiss your feet and stay down there while you pet my hair. I like being held, and I could probably use water and some sort of food, and you’re better at this than you think you are, you understand.”   
  
“I’m getting you water,” Chris says, which isn’t an answer, “don’t move,” and tucks the duvet around him and sprints to the kitchen, from which there’s subsequently a certain amount of clanging and banging around that doesn’t seem to be watery. Sebastian wonders whether he should get up and assist, but: orders. Plus, he’s extremely content under the fluffy duvet.   
  
Chris comes back, breathless and still naked. “Water! And—”   
  
“—and you put chocolate syrup on a banana and put it in a bowl,” Sebastian observes. “You made me a…chocolate banana.”   
  
“You didn’t have ice cream.” Chris sits down next to him; Sebastian lifts up a corner of his blanket-nest and Chris slides back in, winding an arm around his shoulders. “I kinda can’t cook. But you said food, and you like chocolate, and you had bananas, and I thought, well, after a…workout…okay, it’s stupid, I’m sorry, it’s a banana covered in chocolate syrup.”   
  
“I love you,” Sebastian says, and how he manages to keep a straight face he will never know, “and your impressive banana,” and Chris stares at him for three astounded seconds before cracking up, laughter like splendid sunbeams in the night.   
  
Sebastian eats a piece of chocolate-covered banana. Chris dissolves into hilarity all over again. Sebastian licks chocolate syrup from a finger. Chris stops laughing and watches the next bite with avid attention. “Here,” Sebastian says, “you should have some too,” and they end up feeding each other chocolate-drenched banana-pieces in bed, blanket-cozy and secure and beloved, laughing along with the rain.


End file.
